Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your website into an automated web traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add content on a regular basis to automatically begin bringing traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In this section, we discuss the configuration phase of the traffic automation process. We explain how a WordPress site should be configured in order to get web traffic automatically simply by regularly publishing web content to your website.
WordPress Web Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With competition making business survival increasingly more difficult businesses are exploring every opportunity they can to improve their results online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a huge competitive advantage. Having an expertly configured website gives you a significant advantage from the very beginning.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s a simple way to describe the difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus an automated online business marketing system!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with an automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only is more work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
To illustrate this point here is an amusing anecdote.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Things are going just fine in the gizmo plant when suddenly, the equipment grinds to a halt.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the floor manager decides to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Soon afterward, the expert arrives and immediately goes to the control box. After staring silently at the box for less than 5 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer and makes a single tap about 2 cm from the bottom-left corner of the box.
Immediately, the assembly line starts working as before.
The manager is filled with joy as he thanks the expert, who leaves just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request of payment for services totalling $5,000.
With great anger, the factory manager dials the expert. Demanding to know why they were charged so much for less than five minutes work, he promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrives in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business had the expertise required to fix it? Did the expert not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for having invested years acquiring the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly avert a potentially costly crisis?
Similarly, if you could have your blog fully set up and configured so all you have to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While experts often make complicated solutions look easy, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few internal settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed to add desired functionalities to your site.
- Which services need to be set up to get desired outcomes
- Which options you need to configure in order to ensure that processes will work as envisioned, etc.
(Generating traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking on a button or two, or tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of different components including your web server, your WP site, and various third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the steps involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about tweaking settings and options in your hosting account that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic you may attract will be unwanted traffic like spam, malicious threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This area of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like implementing server-level spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring your domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites.
External Services
The idea behind setting up external sites is that all of your content is published to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it gets automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you incorporate these external services into your system, content with links pointing back to your website will be automatically fed to search, social and aggregator sites. Your content and website will then receive additional exposure online, helping you tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of the external sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your settings to help save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Search Console – create a Google-friendly website)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with useful data, tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data, use the account information to integrate and automate traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account has been set up, you can add tracking code to all of your web pages in WordPress using a plugin and send data automatically to various other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account with Bing Webmaster Tools, the information can be used to integrate and automate traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides some great tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media and social bookmarking accounts set up before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
After setting up and configuring everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to go crazy, just choose the ones that will work with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will cover some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to lots of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add a feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Distribute social content to social networks)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse social feed.
There are various platforms you can add to your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external services, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress – Configuring Your Web Site For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to configure your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search indexing, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing
The Writing Settings area contains an important and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, when WordPress is installed, only one service is listed …
(Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs a summary of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could impact someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to view the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the most important setting in this section is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables WordPress to automatically notify the update services list whenever new posts get published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your articles, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to display posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(WordPress Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
To learn more about setting up WordPress permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot ignore the importance of website security.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to botnet and hacker attacks.
More information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your web pages easier for search engines to index …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your SEO. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google to find, classify and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with their social networks can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website with free or inexpensive plugins)
There are many social sharing plugins available for WordPress users.
Most social share plugins let you specify which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Configuring WordPress Theme Settings For Traffic Generation
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your website, many themes also include built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features that can be easily enabled on with the click of a button)
WordPress Traffic System – Additional Configuration Steps
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
These include the following:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only for both good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or plan to), it’s important that your site stays compliant with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding legal pages to WordPress, see this article:
Post Categories And Tags
Tags and post categories help search engines better organize and index your web pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress categories help search engines index your web pages, which improves traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be discussed and set up earlier on, during the Website Planning Stages.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that displays all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external applications discover your web content …
(Site Map – great for site visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps are web pages that link to all other content on your site and provide visitors with a visual map of how your content is structured, while XML sitemaps are mostly just a bunch of code that only search bots can interpret. Although Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – Don’t Forget To Configure This Too!
When visitors enter the wrong URL into their web browser or click on a dead link, they will typically be greeted with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
A 404 Not Found page can be configured to funnel traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your site fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to bring web traffic is publish content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of various elements and web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform the configuration process can take many website professionals months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 3
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help small business owners learn how to grow their business online and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress-driven website and proven marketing strategies that are easy to implement.
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